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Spent yesterday watching the second half of Buffy season 6. As a consequence, am somewhat fucked up.
It wasn't the unrelenting misery and angst that broke me. It was poor doomed Tara, bloody sacrifice on the altar of Plot.
I've seen it before. I knew she was going to die. That only made it worse.
There's a lot of controversy surrounding her death, accusations that Joss Whedon gave in to the evil/dead lesbian cliche, and the betrayal felt by many who found inspiration and courage and hope in the Willow/Tara relationship. I have a lot of sympathy with these arguments (even if the Willow/Kennedy storyline went some small way to redress that).
But what makes it hurt was this: I really liked Tara.
I am not a masochist. I watch television for pleasure. Since I have at least some pretensions to maturity, I like my pleasures to have some depth, some bitterness mixed in with the sweet. But there are two great pleasures that distinguish serial fiction like television from "single-shot" stories like film or novels.
One is the sense of community, of the experience shared between fans of watching something special unfold.
The other, simpler and more direct, is of spending time with people you love.
Willow and Tara are the characters I identify most with. I might aspire to Giles's wisdom, fantasise about being as cool as Spike, or think that Faith was hot. But the two shy, geeky witches in their unflattering dresses held a special joy for me. They were they characters I related to. They were the ones I enjoyed hanging out with most. (Plus, you know... girl on girl action.)
That's why watching season 6 fucks me up. Tara is going to die. Someone I love is going to die.
I'm being a geek, I know.
They're just characters, pieces of fiction dancing on a screen. But isn't that the point of art? To arrange pigments on a canvas or electrons on a screen, in such delicate patterns that they move our hearts? Joss Whedon himself has said he would rather make a show that one hundred people had to watch, than a thousand merely liked to.
I can step back from the show, of course. I can see that Tara's death adds a fragility and undercurrent to all that came before. But let's be honest. Buffy is not Shakespeare. Not every episode is a work of genius. And in Season 6 there are some downright clunkers. We keep watching for the wit, and for the love we feel for the characters.
And for those moments of heart-rending beauty, like Tara's speech to Willow at the end of Entropy about the work that needs to be done to rebuild their relationship, the trust that has to be rebuilt, the intimacy that has to be re-woven, the places in each other's live that have to be re-found.
"It's a long and important process," she says, desolate and frightened. "And... can we just skip it? Can... can you just be kissing me now?"
It wasn't the unrelenting misery and angst that broke me. It was poor doomed Tara, bloody sacrifice on the altar of Plot.
I've seen it before. I knew she was going to die. That only made it worse.
There's a lot of controversy surrounding her death, accusations that Joss Whedon gave in to the evil/dead lesbian cliche, and the betrayal felt by many who found inspiration and courage and hope in the Willow/Tara relationship. I have a lot of sympathy with these arguments (even if the Willow/Kennedy storyline went some small way to redress that).
But what makes it hurt was this: I really liked Tara.
I am not a masochist. I watch television for pleasure. Since I have at least some pretensions to maturity, I like my pleasures to have some depth, some bitterness mixed in with the sweet. But there are two great pleasures that distinguish serial fiction like television from "single-shot" stories like film or novels.
One is the sense of community, of the experience shared between fans of watching something special unfold.
The other, simpler and more direct, is of spending time with people you love.
Willow and Tara are the characters I identify most with. I might aspire to Giles's wisdom, fantasise about being as cool as Spike, or think that Faith was hot. But the two shy, geeky witches in their unflattering dresses held a special joy for me. They were they characters I related to. They were the ones I enjoyed hanging out with most. (Plus, you know... girl on girl action.)
That's why watching season 6 fucks me up. Tara is going to die. Someone I love is going to die.
I'm being a geek, I know.
They're just characters, pieces of fiction dancing on a screen. But isn't that the point of art? To arrange pigments on a canvas or electrons on a screen, in such delicate patterns that they move our hearts? Joss Whedon himself has said he would rather make a show that one hundred people had to watch, than a thousand merely liked to.
I can step back from the show, of course. I can see that Tara's death adds a fragility and undercurrent to all that came before. But let's be honest. Buffy is not Shakespeare. Not every episode is a work of genius. And in Season 6 there are some downright clunkers. We keep watching for the wit, and for the love we feel for the characters.
And for those moments of heart-rending beauty, like Tara's speech to Willow at the end of Entropy about the work that needs to be done to rebuild their relationship, the trust that has to be rebuilt, the intimacy that has to be re-woven, the places in each other's live that have to be re-found.
"It's a long and important process," she says, desolate and frightened. "And... can we just skip it? Can... can you just be kissing me now?"
